Incarnations of the Holy Trinity occur at regular intervals in history. The intervals are predictable and the Incarnations are predicted by the Vedas. Jesus was not one of these Incarnations of the Holy Trinity.

However, Swami Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba is. He is the Incarnation of the Siva aspect of the Holy Trinity. In fact, He is the Incarnation of all Three aspects of the Holy Trinity. Swami Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba is not a seeker. He is not a Sage. He is the Truth. He is the Father to Whom Jesus referred and paid homage. He is the One Whom Jesus said would come again. Jesus did not say that He, Jesus, would come again. He knew that He would not and that the Father would come again as a regular and full Incarnation of the Godhead on earth in the envelope of humanity, as He had done countless times before.

Some students, the final redactors, imported the title, Son of God, from Jewish and Greek usage. Philo had applied this title to Moses before Jesus' birth. The final redactors applied it to Jesus. Then, they inflated the customary Jewish and Greek meaning of this title. They made it indicate one aspect of the primal Threeness which, on the representation of the seminal redactor, they were making the fundamental stochastic structure of Christian Religion. These students literarily inflated the nature of Jesus to something it was not. Others had already heaped up a messy mass of writings, and these students at Alexandria lacked full discrimination regarding the mess the mass was. They applied to Jesus a title from secular usage and they inflated even the secular meaning of this title. They made an invention, even a prevarication. They knew that it was not the truth. They called Jesus Son of God even though they knew the title was a secular one and absolutely inappropriate for Jesus. 

Their purpose was to make Jesus preeminent in the cultural context. But we may ask whether this purpose was worth a prevarication. It was not, as nothing ever is. And we may wonder whether the prevarication was the necessary means to accomplish this purpose. It was not. As we have pointed out, their living, their Ethics, not their theologizing, commended the Religion of Christians to the inhabitants of the Empire. And in any case, excepting for Dionysius the Areopagite, Origen, and the Cappadocian Theologians, between Paul in the First Century and Jerome and Augustine in the Fourth there was no Christian Theologian that we know of who could commend Christianity to the Empire as an absolutely compelling Theological Verity. 10 Thus, it was certainly not Theology or even Canon that made Christianity preeminent in the cultural context. It was Ethics, moral living of the daily, personal, ordinary, much-appreciated and indispensable kind, that caused the Empire to respect Christianity and Christians. 

However, this action of elevating Jesus' nature to something it was not in order to make Him preeminent in the cultural context raises some questions. The cultural context the students wrote for was not inherently Trinitarian. Why would students intent on making Jesus preeminent in the cultural context promote a view of Him which is uncustomary as well as inaccurate? Why would they try to make Jesus preeminent in a cultural context by presenting Him as something foreign to that context? The answer is, the students just didn't know what they were doing. This is something which is a trait of students. They were full of themselves and, on that account, unaccustomed to facing facts. Their actions were inconsistent with their intentions. They were neither excessively intelligent nor exceedingly consistent. Their words did not come up to their needs. They neither said what they meant nor meant what they said. They said a garble and meant a fabrication. And now let us examine their work.

The final redactors hung all of their intentions regarding the development of Christian Religion on this title, Son of God. The Councils employed it centrally. The weakness of the title, besides the fact that Jesus did not want or approve it, is that it does not indicate what it was meant to indicate. The title, Son of God, was meant to indicate Non-Dualistic Christology. Actually, it indicates something less. It indicates Qualified Non-Dualistic Christology. It indicates a relationship where there was meant to be indicated an identity. The title, Son of God, indicates a logical type or order of things which is other and less than the logical type or order of things the final redactors had in mind to indicate. 

There is relatedness but also some distinction between a father and a son. The distinction can be elaborated both ontologically and cosmologically. In the case of Christology, the distinction between the Father and the Son can be detailed to the point of deistically separating God and Jesus. Or, the distinction can be blurred yet asserted, fomenting a mass of confusion that exasperates or angers everyone. Each of these possibilities, plus others, is employed in the history of the formulation of Christology. 

We have to examine this title, Son of God. It is a metaphor which governs the Christological discussions. The metaphor is that of a relationship between a father and a son. To understand the title, Son of God, we have to understand the linguistic operation of the metaphor it is. The final redactors, students at Alexandria, did not understand the linguistic operation of this metaphor and that is why their work produced confusion. 

The final redactors meant the metaphor, Father and Son, to indicate a Non-Dualistic condition between God and Jesus. But the metaphor actually indicates only a Qualified Non-Dualistic condition between these entities. 11 The metaphor implies some distinction between these entities. A son is from a father's loins, but he has existence in some sense independently of the father. A son is a derived not an original entity. And being derived, he is to some extent distinct ontologically from the original. 12

The title, Son of God, implies a fixing of Jesus' nature at an ontological stature that is less than the stature the final redactors wanted to indicate that he had. This fact precipitated the Christological debates which culminated with the Creedal statement promulgated by the Council of Nicaea, 325 CE. In this statement, Origen's word, homoousias, became the operational term of Creedal Christology, fixing the Tradition for centuries to come. The word was meant to cover over and hide the distinction between the Father and the Son which is implied by the title, Son of God. However, homoousias could not obliterate the distinction because the distinction is an integral component of the metaphor, father and son. 

The Nicene statement was embarrassed by the operational qualities of its own language and also of language itself. For example, following the Council, Arians' smirk-filled demonstration that homoiousias 13, their preference, means the same thing that the Council's homoousias 14 does caused Athanasius to authorize the use of homoiousias in the Diocese of Alexandria so long as it was taken to mean what the Council did by homoousias. The discussion was carried out in geometrical terms, the theological lingua franca of the era, but the confusion was complete. The Nicene Creed is one of history's monuments to the inefficiency of human endeavour when insufficiently informed about the nature of communication.

Footnotes

10- I am aware that this assertion is such as might draw a hot retort even from those who take themselves for minimally informed. However, the assertion is neither flippant nor meant to incite. It is an accurate and level evaluation of what are customarily taken as standard-setting elements of the Christian Tradition.

Most of the Fathers were rhetoricians, public entertainers, stand-up philosophers. Few were Theologians seasoned by eremitical renunciation. But unless an individual has engaged in prolonged spiritual discipline which has effectually cut their ego down to an undangerous yet always guarded aspect, they cannot be a Theologian. Only a seasoned monastic, accustomed to the tricks and traps of the inner and the outer worlds and stabilized in deep detachment, can claim to be a Theologian. A Theologian has a heart empty of desires, not a head full of ideas. Return

11- The word entities here means the linguistic entities of father and son as elements of a syntactical construction. It does not mean ontological entities, as in a bi-or tritheism. It was the operation of language itself which tripped up the final redactors, just as it trips up most students. Communication, itself, is the greatest danger to awareness and understanding. What an irony! But true. Return

12- Origen made some noises with this meaning and these were the ones which precipitated the opinion of him as an heretic. In fact, however, Origen only drew out consequences of one of the types of logic that is associated with emanation theology, with the Theology of the Logos. Origen was an innocent heretic if he was one at all. I do not think that Origen was a heretic. He pointed out natural and necessary conclusions of one of the thought trains implied by John 1:1ff. There can be nothing wrong with doing that. Mary Baker Eddy is in the lineage of Origen. Origen was a great Theologian. He produced the first Christian Systematic Theology, the First Christian Science, a thing still relied upon for doctrinal and liturgical formulation. He was the preeminent philologist of Roman Civilization prior to Jerome. He and Plotinus were students of Ammonius Saccas at the theological seminary where Clement had taught. Origen's lineage, personal life and work are unexceptionable. He deserves to be revered. Return

13- ... of nature like [the Father's] .... Return

14- ... of nature the same as [the Father's] .... Return